It literally was just me, my drummer, a fill-in guitarist, a fill-in bassist, and we had just released the self-titled album. So everybody was like, “What the fuck is going on with these guys?” Shortly after that we were like, “We’ve got to start working on a new record.” Who’s going to be in the band? Who’s going to be on the record? We start working on it; we decided we’re going to get new management. Interscope at that point had already fired their whole rock department. So at first I was kind of bummed like, “Man they dropped our band.” But then I find out that they just fired the whole rock department. So that made me feel a little bit better, because it wasn’t just us. But we completely did an overhaul: New business management, new management, new label, new everything. It took a while to do that. Once I got all of our mixes back that we had worked on back when I was previously talking about, we were just unhappy with half of the record. That’s when we started working with other producers. Then we decided to just do this on our own. We finished the last half of our record and we were satisfied with it; went in to the mixing process and now we’re finally doing photos, videos, so it finally feels like the ball’s rolling again.

Papa Roach was one of the bands that helped me bridge the gap from listening to radio rock to getting into this "scene." They had that sort of alt rocky, post-grungy radio rock sound that I listened to when I was 14, but their old stuff had just a bit of that punk sound that got me into the bands I listen to today. So I do respect them...a little bit.

-I’ve never thought about stopping. I’m not the original singer, but how many bands have the original singer these days? Or original members in general? The biggest bands in the world, people have died off and they replaced them. I’ve never thought of stopping. This is what I’ve worked everything for. It’s why I missed my daughter’s first steps. My love for music; I want to get out there and I want to share my music for people. It’s a beautiful cycle. We’re about to go out on tour with Papa Roach, who’s been a band now for 20 years. I talk on the phone with Jacoby a lot. To be a band that’s been around that long that’s still killin’ it and being so humble to give me support, I’ll play our headliner shows and a kid comes up to me and he’s got high hopes and dreams and is like, “I want to be on tour with you one day.” I’m like, “You know what man? You will be.” It’s a beautiful cycle with music. I’ve spent a lot of time reading the stupid fact things on Twitter. I just recently read one that said 80% of people can escape and find harmony by listening to music. That’s definitely how I feel. As long as we’re still on there to listen, it’s worth it. -